


With Human Breath

by RunWithWolves



Series: 30 Days of Cupcake [27]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, feels feels feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-18
Updated: 2016-10-18
Packaged: 2018-08-23 07:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8318938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RunWithWolves/pseuds/RunWithWolves
Summary: Laura had given her heart to a god and yet, as Carmilla held Laura to her chest, she was somehow still breathing. Heartbeat not required as she continued to choke out breath and words. When Laura runs out of breath, Carmilla doesn't need to breathe.So when Carmilla's lungs are suddenly filled with air, it doesn't seem like much of a sacrifice to bet that newfound breath against a death goddess if it meant that Laura might breathe again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> i hadn't written pure canon in a while. 
> 
> SOB

Laura’s heart had been gone for minutes but, as Carmilla cradled Laura to her chest, there was still breath somehow coming from her lungs. 

It escaped in tiny gasps, every inhale a broken symphony of death’s rattle, but still Laura breathed on. The space in her chest under Carmilla’s fingertips had no pulse, no beat, no rhythm for the sympathy to play by. 

Yet Laura kept breathing. 

So Carmilla kept listening. Tears falling from her eyes as the only thing she could focus on was Laura taking another breath. Another. 

The heart beat didn’t matter if she was somehow still breathing and talking and living. 

Laura’s eyes flickered open and Carmilla locked in on them.

“Well, you don’t get to call dibs on all of the self sacrifice,” Laura choked out.

Each tiny heave of her chest pushed air and words out to the air, a determination to speak that was breaking Carmilla’s beatless heart. “Come here,” she whispered. She pulled Laura closer as the word continued to slip out and ever tiny choke for air tickled across Carmilla’s chin as Laura slumped against her.

She pressed her chin to Laura’s temple as Laura said, “On second” Breath. “Thought,” Breath. “you can” Breath. “Totally” Breath. “Have dibs on.” Breath Breath. “The self sacrifice.”

Still breathing. Gulping and hacking and choking like she was drowning but breathing. Carmilla tried brushing the hair back from Laura’s face, ignoring the silence of their hearts in favour of letting out the pain in her own.

“You were supposed to stay safe,” Carmilla said, tears hovering in her voice as Laura continued to gasp. “You were supposed to go back to your nice little life, Laura.”

She was touching Laura with everything she had. Arms and hands and legs and torso.

“But. But then I - I wouldn’t have been me.” Laura managed to say. Her jaw working overtime to try and get in any air.

The truth of the words, carried on a tiny bit breath, hurt more than anything. 

The tears came then. Carmilla didn’t even need air and still her lungs felt like they were burning. She’d gladly take every second if it meant that Laura didn’t have to feel it. The choked gasps ripping through Laura’s body as she shook with every one, throat reaching upwards like she was trying to go somewhere.

Carmilla held her down. Held her tight. Held her close.

“Please. Please don’t leave me.” Carmilla begged. No breath in her lungs as she rocked Laura slowly, “Please. Not after this.”

She thought she’d known begging when she’d shouted at an empty library ceiling for Laura to just come back. Now, she’d give anything for Laura to never have to leave. The breath she didn’t have caught as she tried not to think about how safe Laura would have been if she’d just stayed away. Stayed gone. Stayed hidden. 

Now she had to leave again and her breath was barely leaving her mouth, the shaking of her body slowing as though it no longer had the strength to bother. 

Still, the small puffs of air escaped to turn Carmilla’s tear trails cold on her skin. 

Laura wheezed for words and Carmilla had to fight the impulse to quiet to her. To keep her from wasting the last bits of her breath on something as silly as comforting Carmilla. The breath was enough. 

But she couldn’t deny Laura this, every inhale laboured with pain and every exhale a groan as she pushed the words out with a determination only Laura could manage, “I don’t” Breath. “I don’t” Breath. “I don’t want to.”

Carmilla’s hand moved down to caress her face, trying to hold back her own breathless sobs. 

Laura looked up at her again before her eyes fluttered, “There’s still so” Breath. “Much” Breath. “I want” Breath. Breath. “I want. To do” she pushed the words, “like.” Breath. “Like.” Breath. “Like.”

Breath.

Carmilla waited. She waited for the tiny hitched gasp of Laura’s next word that never came and watched Laura’s chest for the next inhale that was supposed to come even when Laura’s heart wasn’t beating. 

It didn’t come. 

So Carmilla carefully touched Laura’s face as she lowered her down, uncaring of her own tears or hitched gasps that she didn’t even need. Muscle memory more than anything. A result of the pain ripping through her lungs as though, after centuries, she’d finally realized that they weren’t moving. Her throat clogged with tears and it didn’t kill her because she didn’t have to breathe. 

Couldn’t breathe. 

Bending over, Carmilla pressed her mouth to Laura’s. One part a kiss goodbye. One part a check for any last breath that might have lingered despite Laura’s unbeating heart.

One part a desperate facade of the CPR that she didn’t have the air to give. 

A kiss. Where neither party had air. 

#

Carmilla bent her head to the chest that was no longer moving up and down with air and cried. 

#

Before even her heartbeat, the first thing Carmilla noticed was her sudden need to breathe. 

Her lungs contracted in on themselves, forcing her to take a deep gasp as her body suddenly clawed for oxygen. She hadn’t felt the knee-jerk reaction in centuries but her body still responded to the panicked whistles going off in her lungs as she pulled in air. 

Then her brain had caught up to her heaving chest and Carmilla’s hand had slammed against her chest to feel the heartbeat pounding where for 3 centuries had only been silence. 

She didn’t need to.

She was breathing. 

Breathing. 

The air tasted like dirt and sweat and pain and she was breathing and her lungs were burning and her chest was moving because it suddenly had to. 

Laura’s chest was still. The lungs that had pumped on long after the heart had disappeared were still silent and still and dead. 

But Carmilla was breathing. 

“No.” she looked up at where some goddess she’d once called Mother was apparently watching, “No. no. no. no. no” She had to take a deep breath after the words, the air slamming down her throat, “How dare you!” The tears threatened to come again as she looked to the ceiling instead of the breathless girl that had brought Carmilla to her knees.

With new air in her lungs for the first time in centuries, Carmilla roared at the small hole of stars she could make out from the bottom of the endless pit, “HOW DARE YOU!”

She still kept a hand on Laura’s head as she screamed with air that tasted like everything Laura had given up, “You think I want to be mortal again? After all of this?”

After Laura’s breath no longer slipped from her lips to tickle the edges of Carmilla’s ear with every whisper. When she could no longer feel the puff of air that came before every kiss pressed to her face. When kisses no longer meant finishing with the heavy rush of Laura panting into her mouth. 

What good was air to her? There was nothing Carmilla could do with it. No-one to breath it on in sleepy cuddles or creating goosebumps as she hovered over skin. No-one to breath in what she breathed out until the only air they cared about was their own. 

Her lungs hurt and she was breathing and Laura wasn’t. 

“Take it back,” she said. Then a sob snuck out on her next breath, “Please.Take it back.”

Carmilla sat. She breathed. She cried, every tear drop and pained sound interrupted by her own shaky inhales. Loud and noisy and alive. 

#

Her breaths seemed impossibly loud in her own ears as she realized, “My life.”

Her breath.

She was alive.

A life to gamble for a life. 

As Mattie tried to talk her out of making a deal with a death goddess, Carmilla just shut her mouth and felt the air move in and out of her nose. Saving it for where it was needed.

“No.” Her breath rushed out, “No.” If she was going to breathe then she was only going to use it on the word that matter, “This is not how her story ends.” The foreign air in her lungs turned her tears into near hiccups, fracturing the words, but Carmilla kept going. “Screw that. Screw giving up. Screw just letting go.”

The growly little sunbeam said no and, with one of her first breaths in centuries, agreed to risk giving every bit of air away for the holly girl on the ground who was no longer breathing. 

#

It only took her one breath to win Mattie’s riddle.

The word escaping with the air of her first small smile, “The dark.”

#

The first thing she heard was a cough and a sharp inhale. Falling back against the door to hell for just a moment, Carmilla took her own inhale involuntarily as she looked down at Laura. The breath slipping out as a smile cracked across her face in shock. It escaped back out again as a ragged sound born of relief and desperation and joy that was snaking it’s way through her ribcage.

She didn’t have the ear to listen to Laura’s heartbeat anymore but Laura’s gasping breath was the sweetest sound in the world.

Carmilla raced across the room, dropping to Laura’s side as she fought to sit up.

Laura was breathing as she fought to sit up.

“Like,” Breath. “Like i always,” Breath, “wanted to go to Paris,” Breath. “Or London.” Laura breath picked up exactly where it had left off and Carmilla’s hands went straight to the back of Laura’s head to help lift her off the cold ground where she’d carefully put her body only moments before. 

As Laura spoke, the smile on Carmilla’s face let free a gasp of air that was the laugh she’d never expected to feel again. The laugh broken and happy and everything all at the same time as she grasped to Laura, the breathes of Laura’s gasps across her face the most beautiful reminder that she wasn’t dead. 

Carmilla laughed again as Laura just kept talking, her gasping inhales growing softer as they were replaced with normal breathing. “Or” Breath. “Or just the world, I wanted to travel-”

Every breath was made of joy as it puffed out of Laura’s mouth and Carmilla was suddenly overcome by the need to feel, unminding the smile on her face as she dragged Laura in, mid-sentence, for a kiss.

Laura stopped talking immediately, kissing her back with that little puff of air that always escaped from her throat when Carmilla caught her by surprise with a kiss. The breath that tasted like everything that was Laura and chocolate and love and Laura. 

Carmilla let her go and her unused lungs expelled a haggard breath over Laura’s lips, hands still holding Laura’s face close so that her breath would dust over Carmilla’s face. 

As the gasp escaped, Laura just looked at her. Unspeaking and eyes wide. Carmilla had to lock her lips to stop them from smiling too wide and spilling all of her breath all over Laura. Laura. In her arms. Breathing. 

Small tiny exhales. Just the way she was supposed to. 

Carmilla breathing back. Big sniffles and sobs and gasps as she just stared at Laura.

“Don’t take this the wrong way or anything,” Laura said quietly, “but why am I not dead?”

Carmilla could do nothing but look at her and breath. 

“And,” Laura’s gaze dropped to her chest and though Carmilla knew that Laura couldn’t hear a heartbeat from that distance, she could easily see Carmilla’s chest moving up and down. She would have felt Carmilla’s breath on her lips and her shaky, smiling exhales still touched Laura with every second. So Laura’s hand went to her heart in shock, “Do you have a heartbeat?” she asked. 

Carmilla just nodded. Up and down and up and down and up and down. Trying to get her breathing under control as she just looked and looked and listened to every little inhale. 

Her breath came out shaky when Laura looked at her again and then it was gone entirely. Stolen by the girl who was now kissing her like she was everything. Hands in her hair where once had been limp muscle. A chest moving against her own. It lasted as long as it could before Carmilla had to break to breathe. 

Never moving farther than a breath away from each other, noses and chins never leaving. 

But neither moved back in for another kiss.

Instead, they hovered. Mouths open as they pressed together, Carmilla nuzzling her nose into Laura’s cheek. She could feel Laura breathing. So close. So quietly. So perfectly alive. Just the whisper of breath on her lips and it was enough to tear another bigger burst of air from Carmilla’s mouth. She could feel Laura smile against her face, moving closer but still not kissing her. She caught Carmilla’s bottom lip lightly between her teeth and then paused there.

Just content to stay. Smiling.

Content to feel each other breathe. 

#

The climb out of the pit was less than fun and Carmilla heaved and gasped as her lungs tried to remember what exertion felt like.

She glared at Laura’s teasing but Laura just giggled. 

Breath coming out as a laugh. Then she shouted tag and took off running. Breath be damned. Carmilla chased her, every breath bringing her one step closer. Then she caught Laura in her arms and they both tumbled to the grass field and the red trees fluttered around them. 

Laura gave Carmilla five seconds to recover before she was snuggling into her arms and leaning against Carmilla’s chest. Her ear to Carmilla’s new heartbeat. 

She smiled and pulled Laura a little closer, enjoying the puffs of air creating goosebumps on the skin of her neck.

#

Two months later as Laura bundled her up in a truly horrendous amount of layers and tugged her outside, Carmilla saw white mist coming from her throat for the first time. The air was cold and crisp and caught in her lungs like the softest pinpricks but she couldn’t keep her eyes off the white fog drifting from her mouth with every exhale. 

Laura giggled, eyes shining and wide as she ran a hand through it. 

Then Carmilla looked at Laura. Wearing two sweaters, a coat, a scarf, and a toque above rosy red cheeks, she was beautiful. The white fog of breath crystallizing into the visible with the cold of the oncoming winter.

Laura was breathing. 

She’d relied on her ears for so long to hear it. Skin to pick up the whisper of air. Fingers to feel the rise and fall of her chest. 

Now she could see it. The most beautiful picture make somehow more perfect.

Carmilla smiled and pulled her close, breathing into her head as Laura’s smile pressed against her skin. Breathing. 

She didn’t need anything more.

**Author's Note:**

> The heartbeat theme intrigued me but, not only did i cover the thump thump with alt-carmilla, you've all done such a great job of writing heartbeat fics. That last image of them in the pit, clinging to each other, got to me. Then this.
> 
> I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS IS ALMOST DONE. Like wow. Time flies. Thank you all so much for your ongoing support and for being with me as I work through the always exhausting last stretch.Thank you so much for your continued comments, kudos and [ tumblr flails ](http://ariabauer.tumblr.com/).You're all amazing. Seriously. the best.
> 
> This is the twenty-seventh story of '30 Days of Cupcake' where I'll be posting a unique Carmilla fanfic every weekday for 30 days. Stay stupendous. Aria.


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